> However, code quality is becoming less and less relevant in the age of AI coding, and to ignore that is to have our heads stuck in the sand. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it's not true.

Strong disagree. I just watched a team spend weeks trying to make a piece of code work with AI because the vibe coded was spaghetti garbage that even the AI couldn’t tell what needed to be done and was basically playing ineffective whackamole - it would fix the bug you ask it by reintroducing an old bug or introducing a new bug because no one understood what was happening. And humans couldn’t even step in like normal because no one understood what’s going on.

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csallen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, so you observed one team that had an issue with AI code quality. What's your point?

In 1998, I'm sure there were newspaper companies who failed at transitioning online, didn't get any web traffic, had unreliable servers crashed, etc. This says very little about what life would be like for the newspaper industry in 1999, 2000, 2005, 2010, and beyond.

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vlovich123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Im arguing that code quality very much still matters and will only continue to matter.

AI will get better at making good maintainable and explainable code because that’s what it takes to actually solve problems tractably. But saying “code quality doesn’t matter because AI” is definitely not true both experientially and as a prediction. Will AI do a better job in the future? Sure. But because their code quality improves not because it’s less important.

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layer8 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It seems that your opinion is based on expectations for the future then, which is notoriously difficult to predict.

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csallen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not that hard to predict that obviously useful new technology is going to improve over time.

Guns, wheels, cars, ships, batteries, televisions, the internet, smartphones, airplanes, refrigeration, electric lighting, semiconductors, GPS, solar panels, antibiotics, printing presses, steam engines, radio, etc. The pattern is obvious, the forces are clear and well-studied.

If there is (1) a big gap between current capabilities and theoretical limits, (2) huge incentives for those who to improve things, (3) no alternative tech that will replace or outcompete it, (4) broad social acceptance and adoption, and (5) no chance of the tech being lost or forgotten, then technological improvement is basically a guarantee.

These are all obviously true of AI coding.

	▲	ThrowawayR2 a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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atomicnumber3 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's almost no point in arguing about this anymore. Neither you nor the other person are going to be convinced. We just have to wait and see if a new crop of 100x productivity AI believer companies come along and unseat all the incumbents.

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mnsc 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But hindsight is 20/20 as they say. In 2020 people predicted that Facebook Horizon would only go one direction, always improve and become as pervasive as the internet. So when you predict that the design and architecture capabilities of models will continue to improve, thus making code quality irrelevant, you sound very confident. And if in five years you are right, you will brag about it here. If not, well I for one will not track you down and rub it in your face. Peace out.

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csallen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You're confusing betting on a company/product vs betting on technological improvement in general.

It is absolutely the case that virtual reality technology will only get better over time. Maybe it'll take 5, or 10, or 20, or 40 years, but it's almost a certainty that we'll eventually see better AR/VR tech in the future than we have in the past.

Would you bet against that? You'd be crazy to imo.

	▲	slfnflctd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's a kid outside the window of the place I'm staying who's been in the yard playing and talking with people online through his VR headset for like 2+ hours. He's living in the future. Whatever happens, he and his friends are going to continue to be interested in more of this. Whether what they're using in 20 years is produced by the company formerly known as Facebook or not is a whole different question.